Monday, April 26, 2010

SOME WORDS ON DANIEL BAILEY'S THE DRUNK SONNETS

The Drunk Sonnets are obsessed with breathing and love and loneliness and Daniel’s inability to think and feel and function properly in the absence of a friend or a beer or a good woman. The poems are claustrophobic, an oxygen tank set to its highest setting while the man on the other end has embraced his demise, drunk, alone, but for memories of lost love; and for Bailey there is only one; she is everything and nothing and beautiful and careless:

I’M GLAD THAT YOU’RE SILL ALIVE AND DOING WELLI’D HATE TO LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE YOU DON’T EXISTI CAN SAY THAT HONESTLY, AND I’M GLAD I DON’T HAVE TO LIEIF YOU KNOW ME, AND I THINK YOU DO, YOU KNOW I’M NOT A LIAR

EXCEPT FOR WHEN EVERYTHING GOES WRONG IN MY LIFEAND I HAVE TO BACK AWAY FOR A LITTLE WHILEINTO ANOTHER CORNER OF LIFE WHERE I’LL SAY ANYTHINGTO MAKE YOU BELIEVE ME RIGHT NOW

I can’t remember reading an alcoholism this tender this vulnerable and heartbroken and incapable:

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT PEOPLE WANT LIFE TO MEAN SOMETHINGI WISH I WERE THE MOSS ON THE TREE STUMP IN ANOTHER STATEAND WE NEVER ENDED UP SEEING EACH OTHER

I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT WHAT I DRINK EVERY NIGHT CAN MAKE ME FEELANY DIFFERENT, AND I THINK WE’LL BE GONE FOREVER RIGHT NOWI AM GONE AND YOU ARE GONE AND THAT IS IT

Ultimately, I’m not convinced that Daniel will make it. Reminiscent of the best parts of Plath’s Bell Jar, these sonnets are mad and hopeless. They offer no solutions, no redemption, just a human being stripped to blood and tiny fragments of muscle tissue who is just as uncertain of his escape as I am:

I CAN’T TALK RIGHT NOW WITH MY MOUTH FULL OF SANDIF YOU WANT TO TALK LEAVE A MESSAGE AND I WILL RESPONDAT A BETTER TIME I HOPE YOU UNDERSTANDBUT I UNDERSTAND IF YOU NEVER DO

AND IF I NEVER DOAND IF WHAT WAS GOOD WAS NOT REALLY GOODBUT WE WERE TRYING TOO HARD TO BE GOOD